


Stilettos and scrapyards

by DominiqueFrancon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: 1929, Alternate Universe, F/M, Fluff, Great Depression, New York City, Reylo - Freeform, Slow Burn, The Godfather feels, darthvaderwannabe, mafia, reylo au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 13:07:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16954608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DominiqueFrancon/pseuds/DominiqueFrancon
Summary: There were few left (among even legitimate organizations) who failed to recognize the rule of Kalo’s gang, and by reputation, Kalo himself.The merciless capo of the Cavalieri Renzo; a group that was, itself, whispered about among criminals as the pride and nightmare of Primo Ordine.





	Stilettos and scrapyards

The girl’s face almost glowed in the lamplight, as she turned to look at him. When her dark eyes locked on his, her brow furrowed, and her lips straightened into a thin line. Gone was the serene, regal woman profiled in gentle light - this was a lioness, ready to strike - her teeth bared in a snarl. She reached towards him, delicate fingers splayed, and the walls of the parlor began to quake. Vases and picture frames tottered to the floor, exploding into wicked shards. Her fine brown hair blew in strands around her face, and those dark eyes flashed with malice.

And again, Kalo Renzo woke up in his dark, sparsely-furnished room.

The 28-year-old was covered in cold sweat. He angrily flicked his sheets to the side, and swung his long, almost gangly legs over the side of the bed, sitting to rest his head in his hands. He pressed his fingers between locks of softly greasy black hair.

 _These are not things normal people dream,_ Kalo thought. 

It must have been the tenth dream he’d had about her this month. Even before, he’d seen different versions of this girl, intermittently interrupting his dreams for almost two years. A woman he was sure he’d never seen. He was about to ask a priest to perform a fucking exorcism on him so he could get some sleep.

Kalo Renzo padded to the window and tugged aside his threadbare curtains. 

New York never slept - even depressed though it had been for the last month. Through the grimy paned glass, past his rickety iron fire escape, Kalo could almost have touched the tenement apartments across from his. A baby wailed in the apartment across and to his left, and he heard a glass bottle skitter across pavement with a faint tinkle somewhere in the street below. A man laughed and swore in the distance.

The day hadn’t yet begun to lighten over the smoggy factory stacks that poked above the apartments to his right. He’d be getting another early start, it seemed. He could hardly lay back down - if he shut his eyes, the shape of her snarl would be painted against the black of his eyelids.

Kalo shimmied charcoal slacks over his long johns, and tucked a white undershirt into their waistband. White dress shirt, a dusty red tie that satisfyingly reminded him of the color of drying blood, a vest to match the slacks, and to finish his suit, a sharply tailored coat. Catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror through the crack of his bathroom doorway, Kalo was pleased. He’d slaved for years in the boxing ring to build strength into his slim, tall frame - and the suit added a width to his shoulders that Kalo thought more accurately hinted at his physical prowess.

He pulled a black overcoat over the ensemble and pushed his shock of hair under a black fedora with a thick silver band around the base. Somehow, the wide, flat brim helped his protruding ears look less goofy. Kalo always kept his hair cropped close on the sides of his head, but on top, he let it grow out - in case he ever wanted to trade in hats for a stiff gel.

The pale young man tucked a loaded revolver in his left jacket pocket, and one in his right pants pocket. Sliding his 8-inch Italian stiletto switchblade into the other jacket pocket, he was ready to go meet with the don of Primo Ordine.

\----

Snoka, an ancient, sour-faced man with graying, scarred skin, was far more widely known for his cruelty than for his leadership capabilities. Hence, Kalo Renzo and Emilio Hux were given scraps of power, and left to fight over even those like savage animals.

Kalo was almost at the driveway of Snoka’s grotesquely ornate Manhattan manor when he saw another of the don’s street leaders, a woman named Phasma Lombardi, intently conferring with a white-vested button.

He pulled his Model G Sedan to the curb and cranked down the window. The engine hummed, and his exhaust puffed smoke into the pre-morning November air.

“Phasma. News?” Even Kalo could hear his voice was rough with exhaustion.

She snapped upright, and the white-vest retreated to stand in the shadows behind her, ducking behind his own hat. He must have been one of the smart ones. The farther buttons stayed from Renzo when he was in a poor mood, the longer they lasted with Primo Ordine.

“It’s the map to Skywalker, sir. We’ve just learned it might be with Lor San Tekka. Word has it, he made a call to the police station last night, asking for Dameron.”

Kalo gritted his teeth and felt his lips involuntarily, ferally curl back. “So what are you waiting for,” his voice rose, “fucking permission? God dammit Phasma. We could already have lost the map!”

Phasma yanked the passenger door of Kalo’s rumbling car open, and motioned for the white-vest to climb in, before she did so herself. “You learned about this ten seconds after I did. Don’t fly off the handle, Renzo. We need more hands for this job. Swing by the gates and lets get a few more of our friends in the car before you wage war on San Tekka’s entire neighborhood.”

Kalo’s rage crackled and sparked in his chest as he steered the car towards Snoka’s black iron gates.

The guards on duty called out replacements, piling into his backseat, and filling two other sleek black coupes with stony-faced young men in white vests. Kalo couldn’t quiet his thoughts. Finally, a lead on the man that had tried to murder him as a teenager, who had singlehandedly brought down his grandfather’s criminal empire and robbed Kalo of the heritage he deserved. Finally, a leg-up on Hux. Finally, a permissible reason to go plaster San Tekka’s brains on the street.

 _Finally, finally, finally,_ he thought, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. No sooner had the third Tommy-gun-toting white-vest clambered into the car than Kalo peeled away from Snoka’s house. Phasma tried to make her grip on the door handle look relaxed, but Kalo couldn’t care less how she felt about his driving. Streets and shops blew past the windows as he barreled east. Kalo shifted gears and leaned harder on the gas. He had business in Brooklyn.

\---

Dawn was just starting to lighten the gray sky over Williamsburg when the sedan screeched to a halt in front of San Tekka’s slum, adding an urgency to Kalo’s alternately spiking and simmering rage.

Flat-faced red and tan brick apartment buildings lined the dirt street, clothes lines stretched between windows in the few places the buildings parted enough for a proper alley to fit between them. Rickety metal staircases attached one set of windows to the next in a never ending ladder from the roof to the grimy shop windows.

At ground level, there used to be a barber, a yarn and fabric store, kosher wines and a small synagogue - but after the crash, the yarn shop must have folded. Boards crossed the door, and a thick strip of paint crossed out its sign. Most of the little remaining commerce in this quarter would be from street peddlers that would soon be rolling their produce carts, and toting their handmade furniture, to the widest part of the dusty street. 

This part of Brooklyn, in the daytime, was one of the most densely populated parts of New York City - which, for all intents and purposes, was planet Earth, Mount Olympus, London, Rome and Paris rolled up into one. New York was the world, and the rest of society orbited around it looking in.

Not that the _cops_ would be looking in at this neighborhood when Kalo was done with it. There were few left (among even legitimate organizations) who failed to recognize the rule of Kalo’s gang, and by reputation, Kalo himself. 

The merciless capo of the Cavalieri Renzo; a group whispered about, among criminals, as the pride and nightmare of Primo Ordine.

Kalo killed the engine as the two other family cars screeched to a halt beside his. He pulled a wide black handkerchief out of his pocket and tied it over his nose and mouth. He didn’t have to look around him to feel Phasma and the white-vests following suit; although with the exception of Phasma, who wore gray, the other men’s rank dictated white kerchiefs.

As Kalo and his outfit snuck towards San Tekka’s slumbering tenement, the street was quiet but for the crunch of footsteps on dusty gravel, and the mechanic clicking of men loading their guns.

He looked to one of the other men who had driven a car. Kalo raised his watch, and the flinty-eyed button followed suit. “Ninety seconds,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.

Without taking his eyes off his watch, the mercenary nodded to two other soldiers, who arranged themselves behind the drivers seats of the Primo Ordine coupes. The rest of the men peeled off with Kalo, squeezing through an alley to arrange themselves behind the apartments, facing rows of rough concrete stairs and doors with chipped, curling gray paint. 

Kalo found the right door, and checked to make sure his mask was securely in place. He pulled out his stiletto switchblade, pressing the all-too-familiar release, and felt the satisfying ‘click’ of the blade responding to his summons. Phasma and the men fanned out behind Kalo, hats tipped low and guns slung casually across their chests. A mental countdown ticked deliberately in his head.

_Four, three, two, one..._

From the other side of the building, the early-morning street erupted into the crack and patter of rapid gunshots.

On the business end of the three streams of automatic gunfire, glass tinkled out of store and apartment windows, and bullets pelted into the old bricks. It only took a moment for the screams of women and children to mix with the sounds of doors slamming within the apartment complex. Then, Kalo heard the unmistakable revv of engines as the family’s cars screeched towards the bridge.

The heavy door burst open in front of Kalo, and a torrent of people came streaming out. Women carrying babies, jabbering in Yiddish, gangly teenage boys and girls in their nightclothes tugging along wailing children, men with their arms wrapped around shaking wives. One boy was squeezing his shoulder, keening in pain as blood seeped through his fingers and dropped down his arm. 

The frontmost in the throng of apartment-dwellers gasped and backpedaled into one another when their eyes adjusted to the pale light, and they caught sight of Primo Ordine’s lineup.

It didn’t take a moment for the trained white vests to walk past Kalo and Phasma to start corralling people off to the side of the stairs, against the bricks, shouting short orders and roughly shoving whoever was nearest towards the wall. The wailing and babbling of the trembling masses reached a fever pitch.

His troops shoved the building’s last remaining escapees into line until Kalo spotted the stooped frame, wispy white beard and watery eyes he’d been scanning for.

“You,” he roared, stalking forward and pulling Lor San Tekka down the stairs by the collar of his ragged shirt. The old man stumbled, and if not for Kalo’s iron grip, would have fallen onto the concrete. He barely felt the old man’s weight fight against him.

“Look how old you’ve become,” Kalo breathed darkly into his face.

The haggard old man glared up into his eyes. “Something far worse has happened to you.”

Kalo released his grip on the man’s collar, stepping back to arm’s length. His anger boiled inside him - the sheer _impertinence_ of this bastard - but he had a job to do. He spun the switchblade in his nimble fingers.

“You know what I’ve come for,” he said, voice deceptively level and cold.

“I know where you come _from_ ,” San Tekka spouted. “Before you called yourself Kalo Renzo.”

Kalo’s eyes darted over to his buttons, but they were too occupied with the building’s residents to have overheard anything. He felt a vein in his neck jump.

“The map,” Kalo bit out, “to Skywalker. We know you found it. And now you’re going to give it to Primo Ordine.”

“Primo Ordine rose from this city’s original Sicilian crime families,” San Tekka said. “You did not.”

Kalo loomed towards San Tekka, forcing the old man to trudge backwards in retreat. Bitter disappointment and fear started to mix with his fury, as he realized San Tekka’s determination to ignore the map to Skywalker. The whole reason Kalo deployed three cars full of buttons for a unapproved murderous rampage. The more San Tekka refused to cooperate, the harder this was going to ricochet back on Kalo. He was done playing games.

“I’ll show you a crime family,” he growled.

San Tekka bumped into the dingy bricks of the apartment behind him, with Kalo Renzo still advancing, blade gripped in white fingers. With the tenacity of a fool who’s lived as full a life as he wanted, the old man kept speaking.

“You may try. But you cannot deny the truth that is your family.”

Kalo could feel eyes on the back of his neck, as San Tekka’s neighbors watched him tower over the crone. He paused to smile behind his bandana.

“You’re so right,” he taunted, and drove his knife deep into San Tekka’s throat, ripping it through tendons and flesh as he dragged it diagonally across the man’s neck and torso. A dark red cloud spread in the knife’s wake, seeping outward through the old man’s cream shirt. San Tekka gurgled and choked as his eyes dimmed, and his body slumped to the ground.

Screams erupted around them, and Kalo’s henchmen shouted them down. He barely heard them, with the blood pumping in his ears - a personal brand of battle fever, honed from years of killing. He turned his attention to flicking San Tekka’s blood off his knife, and wiping it down with a rag from his pocket, already stained in layers of coppery red and brown splotches.

The faint but unmistakable click of a hammer releasing behind him jolted Kalo’s senses into overdrive, and he ducked just in time to dodge a bullet meant for his head. It drove into the old bricks with a muffled “pft.”

Morning was finally brightening the city, so, whirling, Kalo immediately spotted the distraught, disheveled young man who had burst up from behind a crate. He zeroed in on the compact pistol clutched in his shaking hand - and laughed ruefully.

He knew the model well. It only carried a single shot.

Kalo wasn’t the only man to spot his attacker - so did the two white-vests who had just finished bringing the cars around behind the crime scene. Before the shooter could run, two of them clasped his wrists and shoulders in their grip, tugging his writhing frame towards Kalo, while a third, still emerging from his car, pulled out a gun to help escort the motherfucker.

A few paces from Kalo Renzo, the buttons stopped and hurled the young man at his feet, into the new mud of San Tekka’s blood mixing with the dust of the road. They pointed their guns at him, loudly turning off the safeties, to discourage any rash behavior.

Kalo squatted down to examine the, now evident, Spaniard. A loose brown motorcycle jacket and dark trousers told Kalo nothing about his allegiances. Sweat slicked some of his wavy dark hair to his ruddy complexion, and his brown eyes burned defiantly at Kalo. 

This man knew he had made a mistake, but he wasn’t worried anymore. He was resigned to his death. It impressed and annoyed Kalo in equal parts. He knew the look - he hadn’t risen through Snoka’s ranks on strength or pedigree alone. 

Outside the family, his reputation was as a monster. Inside the family, it was as someone who could intuit victims so well, he was practically a mind-reader. (And a monster.)

But, Kalo asked himself, why would this man be outside-

“The old man gave it to you,” he breathed, realization dawning on him.

Hate flashed in the Spaniards eyes. So Kalo was correct, then.

He stood and turned to the white-vests holding guns on the man. “Search him,” he ordered, taking an authoritative tone. “He’s coming with us.”

The man kicked and let out a stream of rapid Spanish curses as he was dragged towards the car. Kalo smirked under his handkerchief. The morning may turn out after all.

“Sir,” Phasma called, breaking Kalo out of his reverie. “The others?”

He spared a glance at the sniveling mass huddled at the foot of the stairs. They’d be cold in their nightclothes - but at least the temperature helped douse the stench of unwashed, overworked bodies. He saw the shock in their eyes that kept the adults of the group quiet and still.

It was unfortunate to spill innocent blood, but they’d seen too much. And the importance of sending a message to those who would defy Primo Ordine, could never be underestimated. 

“Kill them all,” he ordered.

Echoing gunshots and bloodcurdling screams rang out behind Kalo, as he turned his eyes upward to the walls of apartment windows facing the scene. No one was idiotic enough to be looking through them at the moment, but Kalo knew the residents would have peeked periodically through their grimy blinds as their neighbors were slaughtered in the street. He raised and deepened his voice for the benefit of his audience.

“A good morning to you all, from capo Kalo Renzo of Primo Ordine,” he called, bowing. “It’s been a pleasure visiting you today. If you have the inclination to meet me more personally, please report what you’ve seen to the police. I promise, on my honor as a made man, the scene will look just as interesting replayed to _your_ neighbors when I visit you the next day.”

Gunsmoke and blood filling his nostrils, Kalo Renzo loped towards his coupe, hungry for the map.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi y’all, Reylo is my OTP and I just think they’d make a good mafia couple, I don’t know. Fear not, the star babies will be meeting in person soon.
> 
> Be nice! This is my first fanfiction, and it’s been growing in my mind for quite a while. I’d love encouragements or constructive criticism, help me out! 
> 
> Leave a comment to make my day theeeeenks <3


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